The Last Six Million Seconds

by John Burdett

  Chan shrugged. Fung was rich enough to be able to afford electronic security. Chan had told him so more than once. He strolled to the cash desk, pausing as he passed her. They exchanged glances. Tired eyes. Very, very tired eyes. No sign of fear. It was a mystery too many for one night. He bought five packets of Benson & Hedges, carried them in a plastic bag back to his apartment block in a side street off Nathan Road.

  In the ground-floor hall he paused to open his thin steel letter box: an electricity bill and a postcard from Sandra. In his Chinese way he had assumed that divorce meant finality, but the English tended to cling to their failures as proof that all effort was futile. The cards arrived at about three-month intervals from exotic beaches where drifters gathered. They could be wistful (“last night I dreamed of you riding on a Chinese carpet”) or slashing (“so glad you’re not here to frustrate me”). This one was from Ko Phangan in the Gulf of Thailand: “Not missing you at all.” He categorized it as one of the slashers, put it in the bag with the cigarettes.

  Running his hand around inside the box, he crumpled a single sheet that was almost stuck to the back. He saw it was the cheapest paper imported from the PRC. In the center of the page in Chinese script there burned the single word Laogai. Underneath in English handwriting: “Please don’t forget Thursday.” Chan stared at it for a moment, then threw it into a waste bin that was bolted to the floor between lifts.

  All his life Hong Kong had been a magnet for different political movements. The British commitment to freedom of speech meant that just about any fanatic could buy a printing press and develop a cause, although the big struggles for hearts and minds were inevitably between the local Communists and the Kuomintang, those losers of the Civil War who now ran Taiwan. He had received pamphlets, though, on paper of similar quality, from Seventh-Day Adventists, Buddhists, an animal action group trying to wean aging Chinese men off powdered rhinoceros horn, Muslims from the extreme south of the Philippines, Moonies, someone selling fresh monkey brain-another illegal, and probably ineffective, cure for impotence. He took the lift to the tenth floor.

  Three keys tumbling three dead bolts let him into the 450-square-foot cubicle. The kitchen barely accommodated a fridge and a double-ring gas burner. The living room was filled by the television set and one couch. In the bedroom he had to climb over the bed to reach the other side. He was glad he hadn’t invited Angie back. Where would he have put her? In Hong Kong only the rich had space for plump lovers.

  His jacket was soaked through. He threw it over the sofa, peeled off the Saran Wrap shirt, trousers that stuck to his thighs. Naked he faced the Mongkok dilemma: stew or freeze? On all but the hottest nights he managed without the window-mounted air conditioner with its chamber music like a canning factory.

  As always his exhaustion on the street failed to conjugate smoothly into sleep. As he lay on the bed, naked except for a cigarette, his mind accelerated in tightening circles. He was in a museum full of white busts of Western women, Sandra, Polly and Angie in particular. They spun in front of him demanding a decision, but his only response was dizziness. Then the door buzzer rang. He jumped; a facial muscle twitched.

  He pulled on a pair of shorts, padded barefoot to the front door, looked through the dirty spy hole. Distorted by the fish-eye lens, the American woman was a demon from Chinese opera. A huge face leaned forward hungrily, orangutang lips curled under a squashed nose, hands like claws folded over the money belt. He opened the door to the limit of the security chain.

  “Chief Inspector Chan?”

  Chan nodded.

  “Maybe you could let me in. I have some information for you.”

  Now that she had spoken a full sentence he could identify the kind of accent American actors assumed when they made a film about the Bronx, a curious drawl that threatened to make a syllable last for minutes.

  “Information? At this time?”

  “It’s important.”

  Chan stared.

  “I’m Clare’s mother.”

  “Clare?”

  She opened the zip on her money belt, took out a crumpled sheet of paper. It was a fax with the Royal Hong Kong Police letterhead on the top. She held it up. On the top right-hand corner the words “All enquiries to Insp. Aston, Mongkok CID,” and in the center a blurred picture of Polly. Chan felt a blip of the hunter’s excitement at the first faint scent of quarry; he repressed it, though. Patience was the only virtue worth cultivating; he was with the ancients on that. He closed the door, released the chain, let her in.

  She held out her hand. “Moira Coletti. Pleased to meet you. I apologize for being here so late, but the plane didn’t get in till this afternoon, and when I tried the station, they said you were out for the night. I’m afraid I spun them a yarn to get your private address. I even got to see your desk and that big photograph of you receiving an award for bravery from the governor. Easy to recognize you from that. Didn’t figure on you being so late, though.”

  Chan gestured to the sofa, sat down on the coffee table.

  She looked at the floor. “You saw me in the supermarket, right?”

  “Quarter bottle of scotch, toothbrush, toothpaste. I should have reported you.”

  “That was the downside risk.” She took the items out of her pocket as she spoke, placed them on the floor. “I paid for them, of course, right after you left. See, I know cops. I don’t know Chinese, but I know cops, and there aren’t many homicide detectives going to start filling in arrest statements for a minor larceny after two in the morning.” She paused, looked him full in the face. “Sorry about that. I just wanted to know how good you were. American arrogance, I guess. We just don’t want to believe that any nation is anywhere near as good as the old U.S. of A. at anything. Damn near ruined Detroit till they had the sense to admit the Japanese could make better cars than them. Now you get Japanese quality control even at GM.” She paused, sighed. “I’m rambling. That’s always been my problem. Reason I never made it higher than sergeant. You’re good, though, really good. Even got the toothbrush. I was especially careful with that.”

  Chan, twitching, lit a cigarette.

  “Well, since neither of us is on duty-you mind?” She held up the scotch. “It’s been a long day-and night. Hate to think what time it is in New York.”

  “About twelve hours earlier than now. Two, three in the afternoon. Yesterday afternoon. You better open the scotch.”

  “Right.” She undid the screw cap. “Wow, yesterday afternoon. That’s how it works? I must seem awfully ignorant to you. Never traveled out of the United States before except once to Acapulco to divorce Clare’s father. But you don’t need to hear about that. Want some scotch?”

  Chan declined, went to the fridge to fetch some beer. “You better have this with it. Neat it won’t last.”

  “Thanks. What you want is fingerprints, right? Clare’s dead, I guess, or you wouldn’t be going to all this trouble? Didn’t say so on the fax, at least not on the sheet I got out of them on the sixth floor. I bought this book Clare read all the time when she was staying with me-The Travels of Marco Polo. I guess she and I are the only ones who have ever touched it, other than the bookseller. If you take my prints, you’ll be able to work out which ones are hers. I brought dental records too.”

  “You did?” Immediately he regretted his enthusiasm.

  Moira’s face fell. “That bad, huh? Man, it sure hurts even to contemplate what might have happened. Don’t tell me yet, though. I need to be real drunk.”

  Tears streamed as she poured the whiskey down her throat. Somehow she managed to keep the emotion out of her voice. “Don’t mind me, please. It’s just a reaction. Americans are encouraged to let it all out. All means all too. Over here you do it different if those kung fu movies are to be believed. Never show weakness, huh? Might be right. Never saw tears get anyone anywhere, and I’ve seen a few. Manhattan these days is a jungle, a jungle. Say, what do I call you? Chief? Chief Inspector?”

  “Charlie. Everyone else does.”
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  “Charlie? Like Charlie Chan?”

  “British humor. I’m a detective, they couldn’t resist. Look, Mrs. Coletti, we don’t know if we’re talking about the same person at all. You just saw an artists’ impression.”

  “Call me Moira. That’s what I’ve been telling myself. But you tell me, what would you think if you saw a fax like that? Ever since Clare disappeared, I’ve been making them give me every Identi-Kit from Asia that comes in. I bet I can check out artists’ impressions as good as anyone.”

  Out of her money belt she took an envelope with photographs.

  “This is her at sixteen. I brought it for me really.”

  Chan saw a thin-faced girl in a purple and green tracksuit, dark blond hair falling over one eye, large trees in the background, trees of a kind he’d never seen except in pictures. He paused over the smile. Perfect American dentistry.

  Moira took back the picture, stared at it. “Central Park, 1986.”

  “A jogger?”

  “Skateboard. Now, here she’s twenty-one. Graduation. NYU. That stands for New York University. B.A. in sociology.”

  Chan glanced quickly at the scotch bottle. He didn’t need another drunken woman on his hands; she took the scotch well, though, apart from a single burp half suppressed. Her eyes and hands were steady. He picked up the photograph. The child had turned into a young woman in cap and gown. She was gazing not into the camera but into a future full of promise. Only Americans smiled like that. Only Americans had that kind of future.

  “Now here’s the most recent. Two years ago, when I went to see her in San Francisco.”

  Something had gone wrong. Only a few years down that sunny road life had failed. She was still smiling, but it was wan, uncertain. Her hair was brutally short; two dabs of silver shone in each ear. This time she was looking straight into the camera, trying to say something to whoever was going to see the picture. Help me?

  “I know what you’re probably thinking, Charlie. Any cop would. But it wasn’t drugs. It was just the tail end of an affair with a married man that was chewing her guts out. She snapped out of it pretty soon afterward. It’s just that I haven’t got any pictures more recent than that.”

  Chan nodded. No point in asking questions until after positive identification. He placed the most recent photograph next to the fax that Moira laid out on the floor. Photographs could be as deceptive as eyewitnesses. The human eye saw what the mind told it to see. Urban Man spent his life trapped in an internal dialogue from which he emerged only for the purposes of survival. On the fax sheet he covered over the hair that Angie had given her: a possible identification. If anything the young woman in the photograph was better-looking with a finer chin, chiseled nose, large eyes. A beauty.

  “How long has your daughter been missing, Mrs. Coletti?”

  “Please call me Moira, Charlie.” She touched his hand. “It feels funny not using first names in this tiny apartment. The British really did a job on you people with the formality, didn’t they? About two years.” She swallowed. “No, I’m kidding myself. Must be two years six months since I saw my Clare.”

  “But you spoke to her on the telephone, received letters?”

  “Oh, sure. Sure. All the time. Look, we both know you’re going to see your forensic department tomorrow with whatever I’m able to give you-”

  “Everything can wait till after that. Sure. I’m sorry.”

  She waved a hand at the same time as blowing her nose on a man-size handkerchief. “No, no. I shouldn’t have rushed it, but what else could I do? Haven’t thought about anything else since I saw that fax.”

  Chan saw that the whiskey bottle was empty. In an ashtray he saw a nest of butts that had collected since her arrival. With a hand she covered a yawn. He felt tired himself; perhaps even tired enough to sleep. “You want another beer before you go?”

  She nodded. “That would help.”

  “Where’s your hotel?”

  She coughed. “Haven’t had time to get hold of one. Haven’t even thought of it.”

  She waited. Chan looked at his fake Rolex, which he’d left on the coffee table: 3:20 A.M. In Hong Kong it wouldn’t be difficult finding a hotel, even at that time, but what would be the point? It would be 4:30 before she could lie down, and she’d want to be in his office by 9:00.

  “That couch doesn’t open up into a bed. You’ll have to put the cushions on the floor. If you want to stay.”

  “Oh, that’s real kind of you, Charlie. Real kind. I won’t make a sound once I’m settled.”

  “There’s a bottle of vodka in the fridge, if you need it. It’s the only spirits I keep.”

  She looked away with a grunt. “In the morning I’ll go straight to the identification bureau with your fingerprint samples. And the dental records. May as well take them just in case the prints are smudged.”

  She was already making up her bed on the floor, kneeling and placing cushions from the couch end to end. She lay down with a sigh. “You’re a kind man, Charlie. You don’t look kind, but you are. As one damaged person to another, let me give you one word of advice: You smoke too much. Good night.”

  He lay on his bed, smoking. He could hear her snoring on the floor while he lay wide-awake. It was possible to envy her. His mind flicked from the case to other things. Angie, Sandra. What had the postcard said? “Not missing you at all.” That was because like all Chinese, he was emotionally stunted. She had been careful to explain that to him before she left. She would be surprised that a total stranger had called him kind.

  13

  At his desk at Mongkok Police Station, Chan played with a black government ballpoint. As yet he had told no one about the American woman and her dental records except Lam, the odontologist. Ninety percent of detection was waiting. At his flat Moira Coletti was waiting too. On the other side of the office Aston sat at his desk, also waiting.

  There was a knock on the door. Chan looked at Aston. In Mongkok nobody knocked.

  “May I come in?”

  Riley’s face was almost featureless, like a description by a myopic witness. On it he inscribed the mood of the moment. He was tall, slim, stooped with hands that flapped at the wrists.

  “Good morning, sir,” Aston said.

  “Morning, Dick.” Riley rubbed his hands together. “Morning, Charlie. Nei ho ma?”

  “Fine, how are you?” Chan did what he could to discourage the chief superintendent’s Cantonese.

  “Ho ho.”

  “What?”

  “Ho ho.”

  Chan looked at Aston.

  “It’s Cantonese,” Aston explained, “for ‘good.’ ”

  “Oh-ho ho. I’m ho ho too. Dick-ho ho?”

  Aston busied himself with The Murder Investigator’s Bible.

  “I was just passing,” Riley said. “I thought I’d pop in.”

  Chan waited. It was important to know which Riley one was dealing with.

  “Heard you’re having a little trouble with the investigation. Perhaps a little brainstorming would help?”

  Chan lowered his head in a controlled nod. “Sure.”

  Riley stood in the middle of the room. Chan stared at him. He was not sadistic by nature; it was rather that self-doubt was the only part of Riley he could relate to. The temptation to draw it out was usually irresistible.

  “D’you know what DNA stands for?” Chan asked with a smile.

  “Deoxyribonucleic acid.” Riley smiled back.

  Chan bit his lip: Never underestimate an Englishman in a quiz. “We already have the results of the PCR.”

  “Good.”

  “The heads fit the bodies in the vat.”

  Riley’s face lit up. “That’s what the PCR says? Excellent! Bob’s your uncle! The crime’s as good as solved.”

  “Not quite. All we’ve done is restore three heads to three bodies. Their ghosts can rest in peace. On the other hand, both the minced and the unminced share the same anonymity. Faceless, you might say.” Chan let a beat pass in case Ri
ley wanted to change personalities. “The DNA doesn’t tell us their names, you see.”

  Riley blinked. “Sure, sure.” He wrung his hands. “What about fingerprints?”

  Chan scanned the room for a moment, saw that Aston was suffused with a sympathetic blush, then returned his attention to Riley. He held up both hands. “No fingers, no prints.”

  Riley’s beam leaked like a punctured tire. “Quite.” He wrung his hands again. Sweat exploded in small pods over his forehead. “Anyway, you’re making progress. That’s what counts.” He twisted in his seat, searched the wall for relief from Chan’s gaze. “Triads.”

  Aston lowered his book.

  Chan watched the two gweilos exchange a common gleam. He remembered the adage: Put three Chinese together and you have two conspiracies; two Anglo-Saxons and you have a secret club.

  “Did you know that Sun Yat-sen was a Four-eight-nine?” Aston asked. Chan noticed how anxious he was to relieve the chief superintendent’s discomfort. There was a social worker in most Englishmen.

  “I’m going to buy some cigarettes,” Chan said. “Then I’m going to the scene of crime.” He turned to Riley. “Why don’t you join me there?”

  Chan was prepared to bet that the “scene of crime” was the only empty space in Mongkok. The building was about eight years old, ten reinforced concrete floors suspended from a reinforced-concrete structure 130 feet high. For the owners it was a 96,000-square-foot money box. At the lift area on the eighth floor police No Entry signs painted on barricades that rested on trestles still guarded all four gates. Chan had calculated that the owners must be losing ten thousand Hong Kong dollars a day in rental income.